WEBVTT - SYMHC Classics: Hennig Brand 0:00:02.400 --> 0:00:06.480 Happy Saturday. This week we talked about Ricketts and vitamin 0:00:06.559 --> 0:00:09.960 D and we mentioned that in sixteen sixty nine, hennig 0:00:10.039 --> 0:00:13.800 Brand figured out what phosphorus was by boiling You're in 0:00:14.920 --> 0:00:17.880 a lot of it. We have a whole episode about that. 0:00:18.040 --> 0:00:20.479 It came out on April twenty ninth, twenty nineteen, and 0:00:20.600 --> 0:00:24.520 it is today's Saturday Classic. At the beginning of this classic, 0:00:24.560 --> 0:00:28.360 we talk about an event called Bawfest. It doesn't seem 0:00:28.400 --> 0:00:30.480 like there's been one of these in the past few years, 0:00:30.480 --> 0:00:33.640 but there are still some videos from earlier ones available 0:00:33.640 --> 0:00:36.320 on YouTube if you want to check them out. So enjoy. 0:00:39.479 --> 0:00:42.440 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class a production 0:00:42.560 --> 0:00:52.440 of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. 0:00:52.560 --> 0:00:55.840 Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. Every year, there's a thing 0:00:56.000 --> 0:01:00.760 in Cambridge, Massachusetts called Bahfest. It's held another but the 0:01:00.760 --> 0:01:03.160 wedding Cambridge on the MIT campus is the one that 0:01:03.200 --> 0:01:07.320 I go to. It's the Festival of bad ad hoc Hypotheses. 0:01:07.760 --> 0:01:11.720 It's a place where people present their scientific papers, except 0:01:11.720 --> 0:01:16.080 the scientific papers are fake and all so funny and 0:01:16.520 --> 0:01:20.000 very rare, well argued and sometimes really plausible. On top 0:01:20.040 --> 0:01:23.240 of being so hilarious. So like, for example, last time, 0:01:23.840 --> 0:01:26.880 the winning talk was all about the role of noise 0:01:27.240 --> 0:01:29.720 in the spread of bubonic plague in the fourteenth century, 0:01:29.760 --> 0:01:31.760 and it was accompanied by a whole lot of pictures 0:01:31.760 --> 0:01:34.240 from illuminated manuscripts. And I don't want to get into 0:01:34.240 --> 0:01:36.480 more detail than that, because they put videos of all 0:01:36.520 --> 0:01:39.200 these things online and I want anybody who goes to 0:01:39.240 --> 0:01:43.280 watch it to see all the hilarious reveals firsthand. It 0:01:43.360 --> 0:01:47.600 is often a very cool blending of science and history 0:01:47.720 --> 0:01:52.360 and fakery and hilarity altogether. And the reason I'm talking 0:01:52.400 --> 0:01:55.200 about this is that the winners of this very silly, 0:01:55.240 --> 0:01:58.400 nerdy thing used to get a three D printed representation 0:01:58.520 --> 0:02:01.960 of Darwin looking doubtful, but now they get a trophy 0:02:02.040 --> 0:02:08.959 of hennig Brand discovering phosphorus. Hennig Brand discovered phosphorus by 0:02:09.040 --> 0:02:12.400 boiling pea. So the first time I heard about this 0:02:13.200 --> 0:02:15.880 at Bohest, I was like, we gotta do a podcast 0:02:15.880 --> 0:02:17.840 on that. It has just taken me a few years 0:02:17.880 --> 0:02:21.280 to actually get to it. In case it was not clear, 0:02:21.320 --> 0:02:22.880 this episode is going to have a lot of your 0:02:22.919 --> 0:02:30.359 in in it. Hooray. I love a p joke They're 0:02:30.440 --> 0:02:33.640 very funny to me because I'm crass. One of my 0:02:33.840 --> 0:02:36.280 cousins has a daughter who's just at the age to 0:02:36.320 --> 0:02:40.120 be having sleepovers and at the age where mentioning of 0:02:40.160 --> 0:02:45.240 any bodily function is just instantly hilarious. And I remember 0:02:45.280 --> 0:02:48.000 as a kid, if somebody was like pee pee, it 0:02:48.000 --> 0:02:51.440 would just send everyone into giggles forever. Yeah, it was 0:02:51.560 --> 0:02:53.960 very different as a child, you know. I was raised 0:02:53.960 --> 0:02:56.200 with a lot of shame about your body and anything 0:02:56.200 --> 0:03:00.280 it might do or pretty until I became a little 0:03:00.280 --> 0:03:02.320 bit older and out in the world where I was like, you, guys, 0:03:02.520 --> 0:03:05.480 urine is really funny. But as a child, if you 0:03:05.520 --> 0:03:08.600 said something about p a sleepover, there would be mortification 0:03:08.720 --> 0:03:14.440 and like, oh no. A very different culture. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, 0:03:14.600 --> 0:03:18.880 little Victorian at my house in that. Regard to the 0:03:18.919 --> 0:03:22.240 matter in hand, phosphorus is a chemical element, and if 0:03:22.280 --> 0:03:25.320 you need a quick chemistry refresher, elements are a basic 0:03:25.360 --> 0:03:28.680 building block of matter, and elements are made of atoms, 0:03:28.680 --> 0:03:31.360 and atoms are made of sub atomic particles, but you 0:03:31.440 --> 0:03:34.920 cannot take those subatomic particles out of an atom by 0:03:35.080 --> 0:03:38.800 ordinary chemical means. A pure piece of an element like 0:03:38.840 --> 0:03:42.760 phosphorus is made of phosphorus atoms, and one atom of 0:03:42.760 --> 0:03:47.280 phosphorus is the smallest piece of phosphorus that you can get. Yeah, 0:03:47.360 --> 0:03:52.040 I'll take one phosphorus please. When I wrote that, I 0:03:52.120 --> 0:03:55.559 made it almost sound like all elements are made of phosphorus. 0:03:55.880 --> 0:03:58.840 That's not It's that all elements are made of atoms 0:03:58.840 --> 0:04:02.400 of that type of elements. And so several chemical elements 0:04:02.440 --> 0:04:05.560 were known to the ancient world. You'll see slightly different 0:04:05.600 --> 0:04:08.400 lists depending on where you look, but in general, humans 0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:15.240 have known about gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, ten zinc, arsenic, antimony, mercury, sulfur, 0:04:15.240 --> 0:04:18.360 and carbon for thousands of years. Pretty much any ancient 0:04:18.360 --> 0:04:21.360 culture that has written records names at least some of 0:04:21.400 --> 0:04:24.560 these in those records. These elements have all been known 0:04:24.600 --> 0:04:27.000 about for so long that we could not really say 0:04:27.040 --> 0:04:30.720 who discovered them or who first concluded that there was 0:04:30.760 --> 0:04:34.440 anything special about them. Phosphorus, on the other hand, is 0:04:34.480 --> 0:04:37.640 the first element whose discoverer we can name, and that 0:04:37.760 --> 0:04:41.400 was hennig Brand in about sixteen sixty nine. But unlike 0:04:41.480 --> 0:04:45.040 most of the other elements we just listed, phosphorus doesn't 0:04:45.120 --> 0:04:48.799 exist in its pure elemental form out in the natural world. 0:04:49.360 --> 0:04:53.400 It's extremely reactive, so instead, it's found in phosphate compounds. 0:04:53.960 --> 0:04:57.320 Those compounds are used to produce elemental phosphorus, which is 0:04:57.360 --> 0:05:01.680 called white or yellow phosphorus. White phosphorus can then be 0:05:01.760 --> 0:05:05.520 used to make more stable allotropes, including red and black phosphorus. 0:05:06.240 --> 0:05:09.919 In casual use, the words phosphorus and phosphates are used 0:05:09.960 --> 0:05:13.320 almost interchangeably, sort of like how people say carbon to 0:05:13.360 --> 0:05:18.080 mean carbon dioxide. Phosphates are fundamentally necessary to life on Earth. 0:05:18.200 --> 0:05:21.400 They're part of the structure of DNA and RNA. They're 0:05:21.400 --> 0:05:25.239 also a component and a denizene triphosphate or ATP, which 0:05:25.320 --> 0:05:30.359 carries energy within all living cells. Calcium phosphate helps provide 0:05:30.360 --> 0:05:32.920 the strength in our bones and teeth, so I mean, 0:05:32.960 --> 0:05:35.159 it's just not an exaggeration to say that we would 0:05:35.160 --> 0:05:40.640 be dead without phosphorus. Are very squishy. People have also 0:05:40.760 --> 0:05:45.040 been intentionally using phosphorus for thousands of years before Brand 0:05:45.040 --> 0:05:48.400 discovered it, without knowing that that was what they were doing. 0:05:48.880 --> 0:05:51.360 In some parts of the world, the soil doesn't contain 0:05:51.400 --> 0:05:53.719 a lot of phosphorus, and even in places where the 0:05:53.720 --> 0:05:57.320 soil starts out phosphate rich, it loses its phosphates and 0:05:57.360 --> 0:06:01.040 other nutrients over times. Through farming. For as long as 0:06:01.040 --> 0:06:05.280 people have deliberately cultivated crops, they've also understood that there 0:06:05.360 --> 0:06:08.000 was something about the soil that needed to be replenished 0:06:08.320 --> 0:06:11.440 in order for crops to continue to thrive. There a 0:06:11.480 --> 0:06:13.480 lot of the strategies people have used to try to 0:06:13.520 --> 0:06:16.760 make their crops grow better have really been adding phosphorus, 0:06:17.120 --> 0:06:20.440 along with the other essential nutrients of nitrogen and potassium, 0:06:20.880 --> 0:06:24.800 back into the soil. As examples, the practice of burning 0:06:24.839 --> 0:06:27.839 off the stubble of last year's crop doesn't just clear 0:06:27.880 --> 0:06:31.640 the land for new planting. The ash also contains phosphorus, 0:06:31.680 --> 0:06:34.960 which goes back into the soil. People have also fertilized 0:06:35.000 --> 0:06:39.040 their crops with things like manure, urine fish, and oyster shells, 0:06:39.080 --> 0:06:43.000 all of which contain phosphorus and other nutrients. Crop rotation 0:06:43.320 --> 0:06:48.520 takes advantage of the differences in how different plants use nitrogen, potassium, 0:06:48.560 --> 0:06:50.920 and phosphorus to try to keep all three of those 0:06:51.040 --> 0:06:54.400 readily available in the soil. People did things like this 0:06:54.560 --> 0:06:58.320 for centuries without knowing what phosphorus was or that the 0:06:58.360 --> 0:07:01.440 crops that they were growing needed it. Ancient people's use 0:07:01.520 --> 0:07:05.560 of phosphorus also wasn't limited to agriculture. As one example, 0:07:05.640 --> 0:07:08.400 for thousands of years, people have used stale urine to 0:07:08.480 --> 0:07:11.880 clean things. A big reason for this is that urine 0:07:11.880 --> 0:07:15.560 contains urea, which decays into ammonia when it's left out 0:07:15.560 --> 0:07:18.880 for a long time. But urine also contains a lot 0:07:18.880 --> 0:07:22.800 of phosphates, and phosphates help make other cleaning agents more efficient. 0:07:23.680 --> 0:07:28.200 Please don't take this as any sort of household cleaning tip. 0:07:31.160 --> 0:07:34.400 When we were in San Francisco at the end of 0:07:34.440 --> 0:07:38.720 our tour last year, I went to the Bookbinders Museum 0:07:39.840 --> 0:07:44.160 and that I had a guided tour of the Bookbinders Museum, 0:07:44.200 --> 0:07:45.880 and one of the things that I learned about is 0:07:45.920 --> 0:07:48.960 how in one element or one part of the book 0:07:49.000 --> 0:07:53.440 binding printing process, there were these little ink daubers that 0:07:53.480 --> 0:07:55.880 were sort of leather covered things that you would daub 0:07:55.920 --> 0:07:56.960 in the ink and you would put that on the 0:07:56.960 --> 0:08:00.880 plate that you were going to print, and if that 0:08:01.080 --> 0:08:03.880 dried out, your apprentice had to go and clean them 0:08:03.920 --> 0:08:06.440 and start completely over. So part of the apprentice's job 0:08:06.560 --> 0:08:10.000 was to keep that nice and moist. And the tour 0:08:10.040 --> 0:08:12.560 guide said, do you have any ideas of what they 0:08:12.640 --> 0:08:14.520 might have used to clean these things? And I was like, 0:08:14.760 --> 0:08:17.280 I bet it's urine, because that was the thing that 0:08:17.360 --> 0:08:20.800 I could think of. It would be, you know, in 0:08:20.880 --> 0:08:24.640 the early days of bookbinding, would probably use to be 0:08:24.680 --> 0:08:28.160 clean to clean something, and she's specified that it was 0:08:28.400 --> 0:08:31.080 stale urine, and that is for the reason that we 0:08:31.240 --> 0:08:35.840 just said. So. Of course, when Hennebrand was alive, people 0:08:35.880 --> 0:08:38.320 did not know what phosphorus was or that it was 0:08:38.360 --> 0:08:40.680 connected to all of this, and even after he made 0:08:40.679 --> 0:08:44.199 his discovery, people didn't really understand what it was he 0:08:44.320 --> 0:08:49.079 had found. At the time, European scientists still understood the 0:08:49.120 --> 0:08:52.480 world in terms of not the chemical elements that we 0:08:52.520 --> 0:08:56.040 think about today, but the four elements of earth, air, fire, 0:08:56.160 --> 0:09:00.080 and water. The field of alchemy was just starting to 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:02.800 evolve into the field of chemistry when he lived, and 0:09:02.880 --> 0:09:06.880 the definition of elements was just starting to evolve from 0:09:07.280 --> 0:09:11.679 those four elements into more like today's definition. And there's 0:09:11.720 --> 0:09:14.480 more about the shift from alchemy to chemistry in our 0:09:14.520 --> 0:09:18.280 most recent Saturday classic, but as it relates to hennig Brand. 0:09:18.800 --> 0:09:21.600 By the sixteen sixties, there were still a few alchemists 0:09:21.600 --> 0:09:24.960 searching for the fabled Philosopher's Stone, which was believed to 0:09:25.000 --> 0:09:28.040 turn base metals into gold and produce an elixir that 0:09:28.080 --> 0:09:31.640 could cure diseases in prolonged life, and Brand was one 0:09:31.640 --> 0:09:35.360 of them. Hennigbrand's discovery of phosphorus came about because he 0:09:35.440 --> 0:09:39.040 thought the secret to the Philosopher's Stone might be found 0:09:39.200 --> 0:09:42.040 in urine, and we'll get to why he thought that 0:09:42.400 --> 0:09:45.200 on how he made his discovery after a sponsor break. 0:09:54.880 --> 0:09:57.680 We do not know all that much about Hennig Brand 0:09:57.800 --> 0:10:02.640 as a person. Sometimes as is spelled Hennig instead of Hennig. 0:10:03.360 --> 0:10:06.080 Sometimes his last name is br a and T or 0:10:06.200 --> 0:10:10.640 brn d T instead of br and D. He was 0:10:10.679 --> 0:10:14.079 probably born in Hamburg and what's now Germany sometime around 0:10:14.160 --> 0:10:17.040 sixteen thirty. He seems to have spent some time as 0:10:17.080 --> 0:10:20.080 a low level army officer during the Thirty Years War, 0:10:20.679 --> 0:10:22.720 and that suggests that he was from a middle class 0:10:22.720 --> 0:10:25.400 family because he was an officer, so probably they were 0:10:25.440 --> 0:10:28.240 not very poor, but also he was not of a 0:10:28.320 --> 0:10:31.880 very high rank, so they probably weren't all that prominent either. 0:10:32.280 --> 0:10:35.000 In addition to his army service, Brand seems to have 0:10:35.040 --> 0:10:37.840 done at least part of an apprenticeship with a glass 0:10:37.840 --> 0:10:41.240 blower before turning his attention to alchemy. This would have 0:10:41.280 --> 0:10:43.240 given him the skills to make some of the glass 0:10:43.320 --> 0:10:46.560 vessels used in alchemy, and a glass blower's furnace would 0:10:46.559 --> 0:10:50.040 have been useful to his alchemical pursuits as well. At 0:10:50.040 --> 0:10:51.959 some point in all of this, he married a woman 0:10:52.000 --> 0:10:55.640 whose dowry was large enough to fund his research. After 0:10:55.720 --> 0:10:59.199 Brand's first wife died, he remarried a woman named Margaretta, 0:10:59.320 --> 0:11:03.040 who had also been married before. Her son became Brand's 0:11:03.080 --> 0:11:06.360 assistant in his workshop, and her family's money continued to 0:11:06.400 --> 0:11:09.400 pay for all of his experiments. He may have also 0:11:09.520 --> 0:11:13.120 presented himself as a physician, although according to a nineteenth 0:11:13.200 --> 0:11:17.200 century history of chemistry, he was quote an uncouth physician 0:11:17.320 --> 0:11:20.120 who knew not a word of Latin. As we said 0:11:20.160 --> 0:11:23.240 before the break, Brand was looking for the Philosopher's Stone, 0:11:23.280 --> 0:11:25.680 which was believed to turn base metals into gold and 0:11:25.720 --> 0:11:29.840 produce the elixir of life. Many alchemists believed that the 0:11:29.880 --> 0:11:33.679 key to the Philosopher's Stone was somewhere in human bodily fluids, 0:11:34.200 --> 0:11:37.600 and the fluid the Brand focused on was p Not 0:11:37.679 --> 0:11:40.520 only is urine a bodily fluid, but it is also yellow, 0:11:40.679 --> 0:11:43.679 you know, like gold to be clear. Bread was not 0:11:43.800 --> 0:11:46.760 the only person who thought that maybe urine had something 0:11:46.800 --> 0:11:50.440 to do with gold. Urine was pretty mysterious at the time. 0:11:50.559 --> 0:11:53.679 Nobody knew how the body produced it or why it 0:11:53.760 --> 0:11:56.360 was yellow, but they did know that it did all 0:11:56.440 --> 0:11:59.720 kinds of fascinating and seemingly magical things. We talked about. 0:11:59.760 --> 0:12:02.720 It uses a cleaning agent before the break, but it 0:12:02.760 --> 0:12:06.040 was also used in tanning leather and dying fabric, and 0:12:06.080 --> 0:12:10.559 in all kinds of alchemical recipes. Urine was also used 0:12:10.600 --> 0:12:13.760 in some methods of making saltpeter, and then the saltpeter 0:12:13.960 --> 0:12:17.840 was used to make gunpowder, so part of gunpowder was 0:12:17.840 --> 0:12:20.360 from urine. With all of those things going on, it 0:12:20.400 --> 0:12:22.560 wasn't really that much of a stretch for people to 0:12:22.559 --> 0:12:28.040 suspect that this strange, potent, seemingly slightly magical liquid might 0:12:28.080 --> 0:12:31.920 be yellow because it contained gold. Today, though, we know 0:12:31.960 --> 0:12:36.199 that the yellow color mostly comes from a substance called urobilin, 0:12:36.400 --> 0:12:38.760 which is one of the end products of the bodies 0:12:38.840 --> 0:12:43.040 breaking down the iron containing molecule. Heame brands experiments with 0:12:43.200 --> 0:12:46.400 urine involved boiling it over and over in a vessel 0:12:46.520 --> 0:12:49.840 called a retort. A retort is a spherical vessel with 0:12:49.880 --> 0:12:53.240 a long, downward pointing spout. If you heat up something 0:12:53.240 --> 0:12:56.320 in a retort. The vapor rises then condenses in that 0:12:56.400 --> 0:12:59.240 long spout, so you can use it to distill things. 0:13:00.400 --> 0:13:03.960 As Brand was distilling urine in his retort, the fluid 0:13:04.080 --> 0:13:07.520 dripping out of the spout started spontaneously bursting into flame. 0:13:07.559 --> 0:13:10.680 And it also smelled very strongly of garlic. And he 0:13:10.760 --> 0:13:12.840 found if he caught it in a vessel and then 0:13:12.920 --> 0:13:16.040 stoppered the vessel up, it would glow regardless of whether 0:13:16.080 --> 0:13:22.480 it had been exposed to any light. I'm sorry to laugh, Brand, 0:13:22.559 --> 0:13:28.280 it's funny, though. It's like my fiery garlic glopie. I 0:13:28.320 --> 0:13:31.880 don't The whole thing is very funny. Brand thought that 0:13:31.920 --> 0:13:35.440 he was onto something, perhaps even the Philosopher's stone, so 0:13:35.520 --> 0:13:40.000 he kept refining his process, producing this whitish waxy substance 0:13:40.080 --> 0:13:42.960 that was very volatile if exposed to air, and it 0:13:43.000 --> 0:13:45.360 had a bluish glow if it was kept away from air. 0:13:46.120 --> 0:13:49.520 Here is his recipe for making phosphorus, as published in 0:13:49.559 --> 0:13:54.000 Philosophical Experiments and Observations of the late eminent doctor Robert Hook, 0:13:54.160 --> 0:13:58.080 which was published in London in seventeen twenty six. Since 0:13:58.120 --> 0:14:01.880 this was almost sixty years after Brand's discovery and recorded 0:14:01.920 --> 0:14:04.920 by a different person, It is likely that various steps 0:14:04.960 --> 0:14:07.880 have been changed or added, but this definitely will give 0:14:07.920 --> 0:14:10.160 you a sense of what all was involved in this. 0:14:10.840 --> 0:14:16.160 So under the heading Phosphorose Elementaris by doctor Brandt of Hamburg, 0:14:16.400 --> 0:14:21.280 it reads quote, take a quantity of urine, not less 0:14:21.320 --> 0:14:25.640 for one experiment than fifty or sixty pails full. Let 0:14:25.680 --> 0:14:28.840 it lie steeping in one or more tubs or an 0:14:28.960 --> 0:14:33.280 hogshead of oaken wood, till it putrefy and breed worms, 0:14:33.360 --> 0:14:36.640 as it will do in fourteen or fifteen days. Then 0:14:37.040 --> 0:14:39.880 in a large kettle, let some of it boil on 0:14:39.960 --> 0:14:43.960 a strong fire, and as it consumes and evaporates, pour 0:14:44.120 --> 0:14:47.160 in more and so on, till at last the whole 0:14:47.240 --> 0:14:50.520 quantity be reduced to a paste, or rather a hard 0:14:50.600 --> 0:14:54.040 coal or crust, which it will resemble. And this may 0:14:54.040 --> 0:14:56.280 be done in two or three days, if the fire 0:14:56.280 --> 0:14:59.760 well tended, but else it may be doing a fortnight 0:15:00.160 --> 0:15:04.960 or more. So for one batch of phosphorus, brand was 0:15:05.040 --> 0:15:07.640 leaving urineo out in pails for about two weeks and 0:15:07.680 --> 0:15:11.240 then boiling it for between two and fourteen days, and 0:15:11.280 --> 0:15:14.000 that is not the end of the process. From there 0:15:14.120 --> 0:15:17.680 you powder the previously made coal or crust end quote, 0:15:17.920 --> 0:15:21.400 add there to some fair water about fifteen fingers high 0:15:21.800 --> 0:15:24.480 or four times as high as the powder, and boil 0:15:24.560 --> 0:15:27.760 them together for one quarter of an hour. Then strain 0:15:27.840 --> 0:15:31.120 the liquor and all through a woolen cloth. That which 0:15:31.120 --> 0:15:33.960 sticks behind may be thrown away, but the liquor that 0:15:34.080 --> 0:15:36.640 passes must be taken and boiled till it come to 0:15:36.720 --> 0:15:39.880 a salt, which will be in a few hours. This 0:15:40.000 --> 0:15:43.720 recipe continues on with adding more ingredients and steeping them 0:15:43.720 --> 0:15:46.960 together until the substance became sort of a pap which 0:15:47.080 --> 0:15:50.760 left behind a red or reddish salt after being evaporated 0:15:50.760 --> 0:15:53.960 in sand. And then that went into a retort and 0:15:54.160 --> 0:15:57.000 quote for the first hour began with a small fire, 0:15:57.480 --> 0:16:00.680 more the next, a greater, the third and the fourth, 0:16:00.720 --> 0:16:03.120 and then continue it as high as you can for 0:16:03.200 --> 0:16:07.440 twenty four hours, sometimes by the force of fire. Twelve 0:16:07.440 --> 0:16:10.920 hours proves enough for when you free the recipient white 0:16:10.960 --> 0:16:13.280 and shining with the fire, and there are no more 0:16:13.400 --> 0:16:16.720 flashes or as it were, blasts of wind coming from 0:16:16.800 --> 0:16:19.760 time to time from the retort, then the work is finished, 0:16:20.000 --> 0:16:22.560 and you may with a feather gather the fire together 0:16:22.800 --> 0:16:25.000 or scrape it off with a knife where it sticks. 0:16:25.440 --> 0:16:28.280 This recipe goes on to stress the need to preserve 0:16:28.360 --> 0:16:31.200 this fire in an airtight container, and how if you 0:16:31.200 --> 0:16:34.240 put it in the sun it might quote kindle gunpowder. 0:16:35.320 --> 0:16:42.520 I think that might just mean explode. Uh. This. This 0:16:42.600 --> 0:16:46.440 recipe also contains a cautionary tale quote. My author says 0:16:46.520 --> 0:16:49.360 he had once wrapped a knob in wax at Hanover, 0:16:49.480 --> 0:16:51.880 and it being in his pocket, and he busy near 0:16:51.920 --> 0:16:55.200 the fire, the very heat of it let inflame and 0:16:55.280 --> 0:16:58.880 burned all his clothes and his fingers also, for though 0:16:58.920 --> 0:17:01.120 he rubbed them in the dirt, nothing would quench it 0:17:01.200 --> 0:17:04.400 unless he had water. He was ill for fifteen days 0:17:04.440 --> 0:17:09.399 and the skin came off. So don't do that. We 0:17:09.440 --> 0:17:12.480 should note that it's possible that Paracelsus used a similar 0:17:12.520 --> 0:17:15.959 process to produce phosphorus. In the sixteenth century, more than 0:17:16.000 --> 0:17:19.560 one hundred years before Brand's discovery, he wrote about a 0:17:19.600 --> 0:17:22.800 process for repeatedly distilling urine, which would cause what he 0:17:22.920 --> 0:17:26.680 described as the earth, air, and water to rise while 0:17:26.680 --> 0:17:29.760 the fire fell out of it. After doing this several times, 0:17:29.760 --> 0:17:33.240 he said there would be quote congealed certain icicles, which 0:17:33.280 --> 0:17:36.840 are the element of fire. That sounds close enough to 0:17:36.880 --> 0:17:40.240 what Brand was doing that these icicles could have been phosphorus, 0:17:40.280 --> 0:17:43.640 but we also really don't know. It just merits mentioning 0:17:43.720 --> 0:17:48.560 as a potential comparative. Paracelsus has been on my episode 0:17:48.560 --> 0:17:52.520 list for a very long time, long enough that I 0:17:52.560 --> 0:17:54.439 was getting ready to do it, and then saw Bones 0:17:54.440 --> 0:17:55.959 did it, and I didn't want to feel like I 0:17:56.000 --> 0:17:58.800 was copying saw Bones, even though not everybody listens to 0:17:58.840 --> 0:18:02.199 both shows. But now it's been long enough, maybe he 0:18:02.240 --> 0:18:06.240 will creep farther up the list. There are also other 0:18:06.280 --> 0:18:09.399 accounts that describe Brand's process a little differently than that 0:18:09.520 --> 0:18:12.359 recipe that we just went through, and in one of them, 0:18:12.480 --> 0:18:14.919 the salts that are produced after the first round of 0:18:14.960 --> 0:18:18.640 distilling the urine are discarded. That is actually where most 0:18:18.680 --> 0:18:20.720 of the phosphorus would have been at that point in 0:18:20.760 --> 0:18:23.000 the process, So if Brand was doing it that way, 0:18:23.000 --> 0:18:24.879 he would have been throwing away most of what he 0:18:24.960 --> 0:18:29.960 was trying to get. Regardless, though this was a long, involved, complicated, 0:18:30.440 --> 0:18:34.520 and frankly gross process, a seventeen sixty seven Dictionary of 0:18:34.560 --> 0:18:38.439 Chemistry described it as more curious than useful, along with 0:18:38.520 --> 0:18:43.000 being quote both costly and embarrassing. But Brand was very 0:18:43.040 --> 0:18:47.400 fond of his costly embarrassing discovery. He named it cold 0:18:47.520 --> 0:18:51.280 fire or sometimes just my fire. It's not clear who 0:18:51.359 --> 0:18:53.919 was the first person to call it phosphorus, which is 0:18:53.960 --> 0:18:57.560 from Latin words that mean bringer of light or light bringer. 0:18:58.280 --> 0:19:00.920 That same term has also been used to describe a 0:19:01.000 --> 0:19:06.440 variety of other glowing substances. Brand kept his discovery secret 0:19:06.520 --> 0:19:09.280 for about six years, and we'll get to what happened 0:19:09.320 --> 0:19:11.879 when knowledge spread about it after we first have a 0:19:11.880 --> 0:19:24.760 little sponsor break. Henig Brand's discovery became public knowledge through 0:19:24.800 --> 0:19:27.960 a murky series of events involving two other men named 0:19:28.080 --> 0:19:32.080 Johann Kunkel and Johann Daniel Kraft, who, like a lot 0:19:32.119 --> 0:19:34.760 of other people in the story, worked in both chemistry 0:19:34.800 --> 0:19:38.600 and alchemy. It seems as though Kunkle had a piece 0:19:38.640 --> 0:19:41.159 of Bologna's Stone, and this was a rock that was 0:19:41.200 --> 0:19:45.239 first described in sixteen oh three by Vincenzo Casciolo, and 0:19:45.440 --> 0:19:49.440 this stone glowed in the dark. Casciolo was a shoemaker, 0:19:49.600 --> 0:19:51.840 and like so many other people, he was hoping to 0:19:51.880 --> 0:19:55.280 find gold. He had collected a bunch of interesting rocks 0:19:55.280 --> 0:19:57.480 from the mountains near his home in Bologna in what 0:19:57.600 --> 0:19:59.919 is now Italy, and he discovered that if you ba 0:20:00.240 --> 0:20:02.080 them and then left them out in the sun. They 0:20:02.080 --> 0:20:05.880 would glow in the dark. Bologna stone became a curiosity 0:20:05.920 --> 0:20:08.879 and a source of fascination, as people wondered whether there 0:20:08.920 --> 0:20:11.119 was something magical about it and whether it might have 0:20:11.240 --> 0:20:15.159 something to do with the Philosopher's Stone. Galileo described it 0:20:15.200 --> 0:20:18.600 this way in sixteen twelve quote, it must be explained 0:20:18.640 --> 0:20:21.119 how it happens that the light is conceived into the 0:20:21.160 --> 0:20:24.960 stone and is given back after some time, as in childbirth. 0:20:25.680 --> 0:20:29.160 Today we know that Bologna stone was in fact burium sulfide. 0:20:29.600 --> 0:20:31.640 I love how so many elements of this story are 0:20:31.680 --> 0:20:34.800 like what if I baked some rocks? What if I 0:20:34.840 --> 0:20:39.760 had distilled pee? Over and over? So Kunkle was intrigued 0:20:39.800 --> 0:20:42.680 not only by Bologna stone, but also by all kinds 0:20:42.720 --> 0:20:45.840 of other luminescent substances. And so when he heard that 0:20:45.920 --> 0:20:49.760 somebody in Hamburg had created something that glowed indefinitely, he 0:20:49.840 --> 0:20:52.920 got really excited, and he wrote a letter to Kraft 0:20:53.000 --> 0:20:55.560 about going to Hamburg to see what this was all about. 0:20:55.880 --> 0:20:58.600 In some versions of this story, Kunkle and Kraft went 0:20:58.640 --> 0:21:01.600 together and Bram taught them both how to make phosphorus. 0:21:01.640 --> 0:21:04.320 After Kraft paid him to do it, But in other 0:21:04.440 --> 0:21:07.119 versions of the story, Kraft swooped in ahead of Kunkle 0:21:07.440 --> 0:21:09.720 and paid Brand not only to show him how to 0:21:09.720 --> 0:21:14.240 make phosphorus, but also to keep that information from Kraft. Yeah, 0:21:14.320 --> 0:21:16.800 then that version of Storycraft had to work it out 0:21:16.800 --> 0:21:19.880 for himself, and regardless of which of these is more accurate, 0:21:20.040 --> 0:21:22.840 both Kunkle and Craft did wind up knowing how to 0:21:22.840 --> 0:21:27.280 make phosphorus. Kraft started traveling around Europe with phosphorus and 0:21:27.320 --> 0:21:30.679 other glowing substances, and he did experiments with them before 0:21:30.760 --> 0:21:36.520 nobles and dignitaries. This included Friedrich Wilhelm, Duke Elector of Brandenburg, Prussia, 0:21:36.600 --> 0:21:39.719 on April twenty fourth of sixteen seventy six, and then 0:21:39.720 --> 0:21:41.960 a year later Kraft did the same at the court 0:21:42.000 --> 0:21:46.920 of Johann Friedrich, Duke of Brunswick, Luneburg and Hanover. Kraft's 0:21:46.960 --> 0:21:52.199 friend Gottfried Vilhelm Leibnitz, was, among other things, the Duke's librarian, 0:21:52.760 --> 0:21:55.760 and Leibniz suggested that maybe phosphorus could be used to 0:21:55.840 --> 0:21:58.720 light a whole room, but Kraft said production of that 0:21:58.840 --> 0:22:02.000 much of it would be just way too difficult. Even so, 0:22:02.200 --> 0:22:04.879 the Duke became intrigued with the idea of setting up 0:22:04.960 --> 0:22:09.000 a mass production facility out in the Hartz Mountains, presumably 0:22:09.080 --> 0:22:12.960 so the smell of it wouldn't bother people. Leibnitz negotiated 0:22:13.000 --> 0:22:15.600 with Brand to come to Hanover to work on the project, 0:22:15.640 --> 0:22:18.919 and he recruited a workforce and started stockpiling lots of 0:22:18.960 --> 0:22:23.640 firewood and barrels full of urine. It's not a hundred 0:22:23.680 --> 0:22:26.199 percent clear where all of this urine came from in 0:22:26.280 --> 0:22:29.919 these stories, Like there's one account that says that Brand 0:22:30.040 --> 0:22:33.400 had a relationship with a tavern keeper or a brewer 0:22:33.560 --> 0:22:37.280 or some other person who would have a clientele that 0:22:37.400 --> 0:22:45.880 peeded a lot, but it's a little vague. Meanwhile, Gustav Adolf, 0:22:46.000 --> 0:22:50.000 the Duke of Mecklenburg Gustrau, also heard about phosphorus and 0:22:50.000 --> 0:22:52.960 decided that he also wanted to start a phosphorus factory 0:22:53.080 --> 0:22:58.119 as well, and this duce representative, Johad Wachi Becher, started 0:22:58.119 --> 0:23:01.439 trying to recruit Brand away from Hanover. It seems as 0:23:01.480 --> 0:23:05.000 though Brand tried to use Betcher's offer to negotiate for 0:23:05.080 --> 0:23:08.320 more money from Hanover, but he wasn't really savvy enough 0:23:08.320 --> 0:23:10.800 to do this, and instead he just came off as 0:23:10.880 --> 0:23:13.359 kind of cranky and obstinate, and in the middle of 0:23:13.400 --> 0:23:16.119 all of this, Kraft started writing to Hanover as well, 0:23:16.240 --> 0:23:19.040 suggesting that he might actually be a better manager than 0:23:19.080 --> 0:23:23.879 Brand for this whole phosphorus production project. Leibniz persuaded the 0:23:23.920 --> 0:23:26.200 Duke to keep working with Brand, and it appears that 0:23:26.320 --> 0:23:29.680 during all of this Brand did finally document his methods 0:23:29.720 --> 0:23:35.400 for making phosphorus. He apparently ran a mass production facility 0:23:35.400 --> 0:23:38.439 out in the mountains for a few months. Then in 0:23:38.440 --> 0:23:41.640 the late sixteen seventies, phosphorus and the knowledge of how 0:23:41.680 --> 0:23:44.879 to make it reached England. Robert Boyle, who was one 0:23:44.880 --> 0:23:48.360 of the founders of modern chemistry, heard about Brand's production 0:23:48.520 --> 0:23:51.560 of phosphorus from urine and he independently worked out his 0:23:51.640 --> 0:23:53.960